The Real Reason to Eat Organic Food May Have Nothing to Do With Health

Aaron Carroll, MD. is a physician, professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, and a contributor to The New York Times. In his new book, The Bad Food Bible: How and Why to Eat Sinfully, he writes about "bad" foods that may not be as unhealthy as they seem. In this excerpt, Dr. Carroll dives into the controversial topic of organic foods, examining what spending at the grocery store gets you and why eating organic can literally come down to personal taste.

The vast majority of food that’s produced, sold, and consumed around the world is not organic. In the United States, only about 4% of all food that’s sold is organic; the other 96% isn’t. In many countries in Europe, that number is about twice as high, but still a minority of sales. To some people, the ubiquity of conventionally grown foods is a tragedy—a catastrophe for the environment and for our health. The first of these concerns may be partially true, but the other is not. Organic foods are not essential to human health.

In fact, there’s little evidence that organic foods are superior to the non-organic variety. The most thorough study I’ve seen on this topic was published in 2012 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers at Stanford University conducted a systematic review of all the research published in the medical literature between 1996 and 2009 that compared organic and conventionally grown foods.

A total of 223 studies compared the nutritional content and contaminants (such as bacteria, pesticides, fungi, and heavy metals) in foods grown organically and foods grown conventionally. One hundred fifty-three of these studies looked at fruits, vegetables, and grains; seventy-one looked at meat, poultry, and eggs; some overlapped. On both of these metrics—nutritional content and contaminants—the Stanford researchers found no meaningful differences between organic and non-organic foods.

Martin Barraud

A scientist examines produce in greenhouse

As with nutritional content, the Annals of Internal Medicine meta-analysis did not reveal much of a difference in contaminant levels between organic and non-organic foods. When the researchers looked at pesticide levels, they found that organic foods did have a significantly higher chance of being free of any pesticides at all, which isn’t surprising given that hardly any synthetic pesticides are allowed to be used in growing certified organic foods. But the levels of pesticides detected in non-organic foods were under the maximum allowed safety limits, so this difference was actually not all that clinically significant. There was even less of a disparity between the two types of foods when it came to other contaminants. Bacterial contamination with E. coli, for instance, was found in 7% of organic foods and 6% of conventionally grown foods—no significant difference. The same was true for other bacteria, fungi, and heavy metals.

Although measuring nutrients and contaminants is all well and good, what we really care about is what happens to actual people who eat this stuff. Are they healthier? The Stanford researchers looked at this, too, and found no meaningful difference there either.

Whether you’re more interested in environmental or human health, it’s important to remember that just because food is grown organically does not mean it’s completely free of pesticides. In the United States, for instance, the government’s standards do allow for pesticide use in the production of organic crops. Those regulations govern only the kinds of pesticides that are used, not how much. And what limited data we have suggest that, at least sometimes, farmers use organic pesticides much more liberally than conventional ones.

If there’s any health benefit of organic foods, it’s that they tend to help people eat better in general by encouraging them to eat more fruits and vegetables and steer clear of processed foods. My eating habits changed when we had the farm share. I started eating a wider variety of whole, fresh foods, which tasted amazing. That had little to do with how they were grown, or with their purported lack of chemicals, and everything to do with the fact that they were fresh and nonindustrial.

Once you’ve tasted a homegrown tomato from your garden or a local farm, the ones you purchase in the supermarket lose much of their appeal. Those tomatoes are designed primarily to stay fresh longer and be pretty much indestructible. The tomatoes you grow yourself are designed to taste awesome, even if they may be ugly. When food tastes better, we’re more likely to eat it. That’s an argument for organic foods that makes sense. I’m all for anything that helps us get people worldwide to eat more healthy foods and less crappy ones.

Telling anyone who’s eating conventionally grown fruits and vegetables that they’re doing something wrong is not just terribly misguided; it’s also potentially harmful. I’m thrilled that people who eat conventionally grown produce are eating fruits and vegetables at all. If you want to pay more for organic, my attitude is that it’s a free country, and people can spend their money any way they like. But when it comes to telling others what to do, I’d like to see us spend more of our time and resources on getting the vast majority of people who aren’t eating well to make better choices than to focus on getting people who are already eating pretty well to make a relatively meaningless change. At the end of the day, organic foods are a luxury—one that is simply not an option for most people.